Ezekiel 1–11

An oft overlooked Christmas narrative

One of the primary themes of Luke’s birth narrative(s) is the return of God’s presence and glory to his Temple. That theme is brought to our attention by Luke at in at least three different ways.

First, by means of his description of Mary’s pregnancy. Just as God’s glory would overshadow the tabernacle before it was taken to a new place (Exodus 40), so the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, who set out for Judah soon afterwards (Luke 1.35–39). Things had been quiet in Israel for a long time, but, in the person of Jesus, God’s presence was on the move again.

Second, by means of the specific details of Mary’s journey. In preparation for the Temple’s construction, David ordered the ark of God to be brought from its place of rest into the Judean hillside on a newly-made cart, where it remained in the house of Obed-Edom for three months before it was brought into the city of David (2 Sam. 6.1+, 15+); similarly, Mary (a new vessel) went into the Judean hillside (to see Elizabeth) where she spent three months before she went to Joseph’s hometown, ‘the city of David’ (Luke 1.36, 56+). Also worthy of note is the exuberance associated with these events. Just as the Spirit-filled David danced before the ark at Obed-Edom’s house, so the Spirit-filled John ‘leapt’ within Elizabeth’s womb (1.41).

Third, in the experience of the shepherds. Think about the events of Luke 2 from the perspective of the shepherds: one minute they were out in the fields; the next they found themselves in a remarkably Temple-like environment, in the presence of a bright light (cp. the lampstand), surrounded by angels (cp. the cherubim on the insides of the Tabernacle’s curtains), and in close proximity to an unusual container (cp. the ark/manger), within which dwelt God’s glory (Jesus).

Luke clearly, therefore, wants us to interpret his birth narratives in light of the return of God’s presence to his Temple. The birth of Jesus is the return of God’s glory.

The same theme is reflected in Luke’s allusions to Ezekiel 1–11. Ezekiel and Zechariah underwent quite similar experiences. Both men were righteous priests who dwelt amidst an unrighteous people; both men were struck dumb and forced to etch what they wanted to say on a tablet; and both men thus became ‘signs’ to the house of Israel (Ezek. 4, Luke 1.22, 63).

And the parallels between Luke and Ezekiel run deeper. Consider the sequence of events prior to God’s departure from the Temple in Ezekiel 4–11:

• Ezekiel lay on his left side for 390 days—that is to say, he performed a sign-act which came to its conclusion in its 14th month;

• afterwards, Ezekiel lay on his right side for 40 days and ate unclean food (in order to depict Jerusalem’s unclean state while she was besieged); and

• finally, at the end of these 40 days, God’s glory left the Temple. (For the timetable, cp. below.)

Luke’s birth narrative—i.e., the narrative in which God’s glory returns to his Temple—describes an extraordinary counterpoint to and reversal of these events.

• Elizabeth conceived, and then, in the sixth month of her pregnancy, Mary conceived;

• nine months later—i.e., in the 14th month after Elizabeth became pregnant—the Son of God was born; and

• 40 days later, at the end of Mary’s period of uncleanness, Jesus was brought to Jerusalem’s Temple (cp. Lev. 12).

The timetable of the return of God’s glory thus echoes/recapitulates the timetable of its departure. And Luke’s description of the return of God’s glory seems remarkably apt. While God’s glory was borne away from the Temple by four angelic creatures, God’s glory returned in the person of Jesus accompanied by four angelic appearances (1.11, 1.26, 2.9, 2.13). And, while God’s glory departed from a Temple full of sun-worshippers and women who wept for Tammuz, it returned in the form of ‘the Sunrise from on high’ in answer to the prayers of a godly woman named Anna, who poured out her heart before the Lord in the Temple courts (1.78, 2.37).

Anna’s presence at the Temple is also significant for another reason. Anna waited 84 years for the return of God’s glory (2.36), which echoes the period of time for which the remnant of Israel as a whole waited. God’s glory left the Temple in September 592 BC,¹ and, if Jesus was born in September 4 BC (a date as plausible as most others),² then it returned to the Temple exactly 588 years later. Hence, while Anna waited for 84 years—i.e., for 12 weeks of years—, the remnant as a whole waited for 12 weeks of weeks of years, i.e., for 12 Jubilees. Or, in the language of the Qumran scrolls, the remnant waited for two mega-Jubilees. (The scroll 4Q319 constructs a super-cycle of 49 six-year priestly cycles, i.e., of 294 years, which it numbers not from one to six [as expected], but from two to seven in order to enhance its Jubilee-like significance.³)

To sum up, then, ‘When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law’ (Gal. 4.4).

Appendix: A Chronology of Ezekiel 1–8’s Events

Ezekiel 1–8’s events are not easy to chronologise for at least a couple of reasons. First, it is not immediately obvious to see how a 430-day sign-act can be accommodated within the period between the 5th day of the 4th month of Year 5 and and the 5th day of the 6th month of Year 6. (14 lunar months make 420 days at most.) The trick is to recall how ancient Near Eastern calendars kept in sync with the solar year, viz. by intercalation. Whereas solar calendars have ‘leap days’, lunar calendars have ‘leap months’. And if Ezekiel’s Year 5 was a leap year, then his 430-day sign-act can easily be accommodated within the relevant period.

Second, the chronological details of 3.15–16 are somewhat ambiguous. In 3.16, many translations read, ‘At the end of seven days, the word of YHWH came to me’, which is a possible interpretation of the text, but the clauses ‘at the end of seven days’ and ‘the word of YHWH came to me’ are separated by a petuchah (פ), and the first clause does not refer to ‘the seven days’ (just mentioned?) (שבעת הימים), but simply to ‘seven days’ (שבעת ימים), which makes it possible (attractive?) to read וָאֵשֵׁב שם שבעת ימים...ויהי מקצה שבעת ימים as ‘I sat there for seven days,…and another seven days came to an end’, as I have done here.

The chronology of Ezekiel 1–8’s events then pans out as follows.

1. For the time of Jerusalem’s fall, cp. Rodger Young, ‘When Did Jerusalem Fall?’ in JETS, Vol. 47:1 (March 2004), pp. 21–38.

2. Traditionally, Herod’s death has been assigned to the year 4 BC. In recent decades, however, a 1 BC date of death has begun to look more probable, hence Jack Finegan abandoned a 4 BC date of death in the Revised Edition of his seminal Handbook of Biblical Chronology. (The latest article on the subject is Rodger Young and Andrew Steinmann’s ‘Consular and Sabbatical Years in Herod’s Life’ in Bibliotecha Sacra, Vol. 177, December 2020, pp. 442–461, which includes references to their previous work.) As for the chronological relationship between Herod’s death and Jesus’ birth, Jesus’ birth is sometimes assumed to predate Herod’s death by about two years on the basis of Matthew 2.16 (which has Herod decree the slaughter of all Bethlehem’s infants under the age of two), but it could easily have predated it by significantly longer than two years, since we do we not know how much time elapsed between the slaughter of Bethlehem’s infants and Herod’s death. Meanwhile, for an argument for a September date of birth, cp. Ian Paul’s Jesus Wasn’t Born at Christmas.

3. For a summary of the evidence, cp. Sacha Stern, Calendars in Antiquity: Empires, States, and Societies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 367ff.